Conversation with a young friend

I’m still mopey about the makerspace sometimes, though I clearly (CLEARLY) don’t have time to do it properly right now. Talking to someone in a few weeks about whether they might be able to take over direction of it. It’s not dead, just sleeping.

I was recently talking with a former student, who’s interested in writing both fiction and nonfiction; I suggested some nonfiction pieces I thought she was well placed to pitch and write, that are totally in her wheelhouse. And she said (hope she doesn’t mind if I paraphrase her here) that talking to me, I made it seem easy, or possible — something like that.

And I totally think she could develop a side hustle writing articles for various magazines, blogs, even newspapers (she’s a young mom with littles, so it works well with that), but more, it reminded me of why I wanted to do the maker space in the first place — because so many people get intimidated by the first steps of writing, or cooking, or gardening, or tech, etc.

Or if not intimidated, they just don’t have the first steps clear to them, and if they had someone they could apprentice with, it’d be so much easier. Academia is great, for what it does, but it seems like we still need better structures for other kinds of learning.

I’m envisioning someone sort of like a high school guidance counsellor, I suppose, but for adults. Not a career coach, exactly. Someone, or some place, where you could try out lots of things, or try something you’re particularly interested in, and they’d gently guide you through the first steps, giving you the scaffolding to hold you up, until you were ready to do it on your own.

Sigh. Someday.

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